Finding Value
by Worldmage
Summary: Nabiki has a moment of doubt. Is she really as evil as they say?


Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma ½! I probably can't even pronounce "Takahashi Rumiko" correctly, what with my strongly American (Midwestern) accent. But unlike certain people, I'm not turning a profit. In fact, I'm not making any money off of any fanfiction. So suing me won't do any good.

Disclaimer II: This fic is based on events from Volume 15 of the English-language manga. Expect spoilers.

Finding Value

Back-story: For those who don't know: Nabiki has been Ranma's fiancée for a while—busily renting him out and otherwise making money off of the occasion. He had gotten caught in the middle of a fight between Akane and Nabiki and, as usual, he messed up and became a casualty. He tried to make up with Akane a couple times, but the usual misunderstandings and their inability to say what they meant kept it from happening. Finally Nabiki has decided it's time to end the farce (before Akane kills someone) and sets her younger sister up for a date with Ranma—who, unknowing, is planning on taking Nabiki on a "Hell date" as revenge for her manipulations, which included her telling him that she loved him. (He then overheard her tell Kasumi that it was a joke.) Meanwhile…

…

It's evening now in Nerima. Things are relatively quiet in the Tendo dojo—unnaturally quiet, perhaps. Instead of punishing cinder blocks as she has been for the past several evenings, Akane is humming happily and trying on various outfits in front of her mirror. Ranma's chuckling to himself and cracking his knuckles repeatedly up in his room, for some reason. Father and Saotome-san are engrossed in a game of Shogi, for once not arguing about whether take-backs are allowed. Kasumi is folding towels in the laundry room. The loudest person in the house is… me. Counting.

"Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy. Exactly seventy thousand yen gross income. And for once, there were only minimal expenses." I sit back in my chair and sigh. It's been a long day. Even after the balcony repair costs and incidental expenditures, I managed to turn a respectable profit. Father will be happy that we're not reduced to eating just rice again.

As per my standard procedure, I wrap sixty thousand of the yen in paper and wind a rubber band around the package. First, I check the hall and out the window. Good. No spies are haunting my room for extra cash. I remove the extra shoebox from under the bed. Inside of this is the small metal jewelry box where I keep the family treasury. I stack the money neatly inside my makeshift safe. I like how precisely the bills fit. It's a lot… tidier than most things in life. With this latest income, we have a good seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand yen stored up against hard times. Taking a pencil, I write the new sum on a slip of paper taped to the inside of the lid. Finally, I can secure the box back in its hiding place. Of the ten thousand extra, half goes into a fold of paper labeled "spending cash." I'll take it downstairs and put it into the jar of change Kasumi empties when she goes out shopping. The rest I allow myself to keep for my own use. Since I pay allowances in this family, I'm the only member who doesn't get one.

"Let me see." Methodically, I tick off my finished tasks. "Profit maximized, costs minimized. Akane appeased. Father, Genma, and Kasumi released from their fear that Akane'll lose it. Ranma disposed of, and given what he truly wants, to boot. Everything is wrapped up nice and tidy, with no loose ends, and the family is fed for another while."

My face relaxes into a triumphant grin—the first true smile I've worn in several days. Now that my tasks are complete, I can flop onto my bed with a magazine and a bag of cookies. "That should take care of everything. You know, sometimes I really _am_ a nice person!"

The smile freezes on my face, then fades. Another sigh forces itself out of me as I roll onto my back. Staring at the ceiling, I chew my snack slowly and meditatively.

"A nice person…" against my will, my memory returns to the previous afternoon. It hadn't been very nice of me to ask for money from my own sister. Sure, the family would be that much better off if the girl's allowance was cycled back into the general funds, but still…. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Akane balked at paying to get Ranma back. The girl is as stubborn as… as an Akane, and tends to clutch blindly to principle no matter how badly it hurts. I suppose that that's one of her admirable qualities.

I guess I'll have to try to get the money from Ranma instead.

Despite her hotheaded blindness, though, Akane is capable at times of unknowingly cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Even the nastiest of her barbed comments are accurate and acid— probably the main reason she and Ranma don't get along as well as they should. 'I know you can be cold, heartless, and manipulative,' she had said. 'But even _you_ can't say something like that and not mean it!'

I'm so glad that my poker face is perfect. I managed to steer the conversation away, turning it at last into an argument over how true Akane is to her own feelings. She isn't, after all, and it's obvious to everybody but Ranma and his horde of fiancées. But her casual bit of reasoning hurt me, somehow.

I know that that's how I'm seen by most people, especially at school. Ucchan voiced popular opinion perfectly when she said that I'd sell love itself if I could. It didn't strike her as ironic, I guess, that she said it while paying the rental fee for an hour with Ranma. But that my own sister should be fooled too—that hurts. And it made me think. It made me think about useless stuff that I'd far rather not bother with, but which won't go away.

I mean, sure, I've occasionally thought that life would be so much nicer without having to make emotional attachments. But I enjoy living with the family. Even the Saotome guys are nice company, when they're not being belligerent about something or other. I have some friends who I hang out with in our spare time. I'm not cold—am I? Cold is when you're unfriendly to everybody. I don't do that. I hold them at an emotional distance. But that's necessary if you need to make a profit! "This world will suck the juice out of you, and spit out seeds, if you're not careful." If by "cold," she was referring to that emotional distance, well…

I'm getting uncomfortable, and shift to a different part of the bed. I don't have an answer to that thought. I guess you can make anything sound bad, if you take a word with a negative connotation and redefine it until it fits the situation. I say that as long as I'm capable of being friendly, without faking it, then I'm not truly cold. Right. Definitely.

Heartless, she said also. That's just plain wrong. Yes, it's fun to win, to make money despite the best efforts of others. But doesn't the fact that I have fun mean that I'm not heartless? Heartless is when you have no emotions. Or no positive emotions. Enjoyment is positive.

Or does it mean that you can't empathize with other people? That's another bothersome one. I mean, I can't help it that I'm smarter than everybody else I know. Some people, like the Saotomes or Kuno-chan, are dumb. There's just no other way to put it. Father knows, at the very least, that I'm best in the family with numbers. I also rank at least as high as Kasumi in the common sense department. If not for those factors, why else would I handle all our money? I usually set the grade curve in my class, especially when Ami-chan is having an off day. And I know that I'm smart. I take advantage of that, and I don't care who knows. But does that mean that I'm heartless?

No. It can't. She just said it because I've been running rings around her, mentally, ever since the argument started. I took advantage of her anger toward Ranma, and now she's frustrated that I won't give him back. She thinks it's heartless of me to ask for money. But she's just as unable to understand me as I am unwilling to bow to her emotions. Ranma is a valuable commodity, and she's not making the effort to understand my point of view—

"I can't believe I thought that!" For a moment, I cover my face with my hands. I'm in control, though, and fold them across my stomach again in a more contemplative posture. Please, Kami-sama, I hope nobody heard me say that. Show no weakness. If Akane can hold it in, so can I. But what on Earth is wrong with me? She can't have been right! And yet, there it was. _Ranma is a commodity_. If that's not a lack of empathy, I don't know what is.

When did I turn into an inhuman… caricature of myself? The money-grubbers we see in stories are _fictional_. That's all there is to it. So when did I become one of them? When did I start thinking about other people, from future brothers-in-law to current classmates, purely in terms of how I could make money off of them? When did I start thinking about family members that way? Now that I think about it, I've been selling pictures of both Ranma and Akane—some racier than others, although Akane's usually decently clothed—to Tatewaki and other classmates for a couple of years now. Even after photo-development costs, there's a very decent profit to be made, and it keeps rice on the table.

Ugh. There's another pigeonhole. Father and Saotome-san fill it perfectly, with their endless stream of creditors from the past dropping in to collect on decade-old dinner bills. But that was because of their greed and unwillingness to pay for things. I always pay for what I get. I may bargain, but that's only intelligent. I'm not like them.

That can't be the real me. It's a fictional characterization; it's a stereotype of me. I'm deeper and more complex than some coin-biting miser who'd sooner sell her own sister than go without sauce on her ramen. I wouldn't sell out my own family… just use them without them knowing.

Lord. That sounds manipulative. The third corner of the trinity of accusations. I guess I can't deny that. After all, I've been pulling the puppet-strings in this whole business ever since Akane slapped Ranma and told him to get engaged to me. So what if he saved me instead of her after the balcony broke? Even I could tell that it was a compliment; that he had a lot of faith in her abilities. But I didn't point it out. Instead I snapped him up, all smug smirk and confidence, glad that I could command his time for the next few days until he got to be too much to handle.

And now I've discarded him like a used toy. I can't have him getting attached to me, after all. But it's not just because he's younger. If I kept him too long, Akane would crack. She's been feeling the strain a lot lately—she's still fighting with Ranma, but without the insurance that he's her fiancé. If he was, they could fight and she'd still feel safe, knowing that he's hers. But now he's gone, and she can't seem to make up with him. They're both too proud.

I can't let my sister unravel like that. I guess I can accept that I'm manipulative. You could even argue that I can't help it. I'm highly intelligent, after all. But nobody can deny that I use my manipulations for a noble purpose. When I pry money out of people, it's to feed the family, and to repair the dojo after those ludicrous battles that keep happening. I set Ranma up with Akane on a date, which is exactly what they both want, when they're unable to make up on their own. I'm not even getting paid for my services on that last note.

I guess that that also demonstrates that I'm not heartless or cold, either. I have emotions. I care about people. It's just that I help out in ways that are easy to overlook. You could even say that I'm making a bigger sacrifice than anyone else in the family is. I'm sacrificing my reputation. I do good things in such a way that nobody notices. I don't ask for praise or recognition or even the respect that I deserve. I take comments like Akane's without flinching.

It doesn't matter that I'm sarcastic or arrogant at times. It doesn't matter whether they think I care or not. I know that I do, and that's what counts. I feed and clothe them, and pull the strings that keep the more violent family members from losing control. I may seem like a cutout figure. I may be manipulative. But I can live with that. And that, plus 728,000 yen, is enough to make my life meaningful.

I roll back over and take another cookie. I'm humming too, now; a counterpoint to Akane's tuneless tune of happiness. I flip through the catalogue, looking for floor-panels that might be strong enough to survive the next mealtime battle.

Akane is mumbling now on the other side of the wall, practicing hypothetical conversations with Ranma for their date. She won't use any of them. They're too romantic. Ranma himself has finally gone to sleep, probably exhausted from being rented out all day long. Father and Saotome-san are arguing over who sneezed and messed up the board. Kasumi is probably waiting to pick up the board and pieces after the game dissolves into the usual brawl. And from my room… well, if you stood outside and pressed your ear up against the door, you could probably hear me laughing. Life is fun.

—

Author's Notes:

This isn't just my first Ranma fic—it's my first non-Evangelion fic. And, somehow, it turned into an introspective piece, mildly reminiscent of Eva-style depression. [sighs] Oh well. Hope you liked it. If so, tell me why. If not, tell me why. I'm looking for feedback and constructive criticism. Thanks!

Um… in the text, I use a quote from the Vertigo comic series "Books of Magic," issue one. They can't sue me either.

-Worldmage


End file.
